For most of the year I've been posting my DOOM! lists over at Anime World Order but I'm reminded my login still works here. A full con report will be posted there, but for now:
A record-setting 25,000 people showed up to Anime Weekend Atlanta, and roughly 10% of the convention--that's 2500 people!--went to Friday's Anime Hell in Main Events. Saturday though is "the busy day," with major concert performances, dance events, music video and costume contests, dub premieres, and adults-only programming are all going on concurrently. The con continues to grow, but the purpose of DOOM! remains the same: to offer up an alternative to all that.
DOOM!'s new location this year was in Williams Ballroom E, the perfect "it's one of the biggest rooms but not the biggest room in the place" sized venue for it. If I had any critique of the venue it's that the ballrooms that size really need two projector screens, one on each side. This just had one single screen in the corner, but I anticipated this possibility (it happens often) and kept the subtitled clips to a minimum.
I didn't even know where the room was until about an hour beforehand, and while that's normally lighthearted con absentmindedness, this year all it reminded me of was the last correspondence I ever had with Dan Baker: saying I didn't know the time and venue but would let him know. Danno would always whip up a silly flyer image and post a blog update with the location and start time info on my behalf, and needed me to tell him that for him to start. By the time I'd gotten word, he'd passed away. I just couldn't get into the necessary mindset to put together a playlist, but the benefit of running everything off of a computer is that you can put stuff together moments before and/or on the fly. I did more of that than usual this year.
But it all worked out. Despite lots of evening competition vying for the attention of congoers, but 90%-95% of the room was full and stayed that way through to the end when we had to clear out to make room for the debuting 18+ cosplay event. The Surface Pro 2 tablet has officially replaced my bulky laptops of the past, and I had no errors with adapters, tech hookups, files not playing, clips bugging out, crashes, or any of the usual antics. Good thing too, since with everything going on if I had needed a tech guy there would've been very little chance of getting one. Afterwards, one person thanked me for "being the only panelist who didn't have any tech difficulties" (on cue, I then disconnected the audio from the tablet, causing a big ol' eardrum damaging feedback BZZZZZ) and another noted that he'd been attending AWA for 12 years, had never even heard of my panel until now, but would be sure to tell his friends for next year.
But will there BE a next year? It wasn't until Sunday morning that I finally went into the Kennesaw ballroom for the first time the entire convention, and it dawned on me how many people I'd sat and joked with in that very room were now dead or otherwise not present. Hopefully I'll still have people willing to make the trip with me come 2016...
Pre-DOOM!, I showed some short bits: about half of the animated music video "Transfer," the "Deprive" segment of Robot Carnival, and "Prosthetic Moses" (a ghost with tap dancing shoes set to "Moses Supposes" from Singing in the Rain).
As for What Got Shown (this list is not in sequential order):
The Top 5 Viral Pictures of 1911, the entire alley fight from They Live, Sonic the Hedgehog's inability to summarize Dragon Ball Z, praising Sonic the Hedgehog for being a deaf woman, the Nigerian special effects bonanza that is B14 ONE AND TWO, Bill Plympton cartoon on the dangers of setting domesticated pets free in the wild, Black Dynamite's manequin teaching hard lessons to pro wrestlers and MMA fighters in Japanese variety show fashion, the Eagle's Nest Ministries warning us of the dangers of Skeletor and Dungeons & Dragons, the live-action Assassination Classroom, Bounty Hunter Hard in a rather improbable car chase, Tyrone explaining dogecoin, the Sci-Fi Channel's early 1990s ads for adventures in Japanese animation, Baki the Grappler punching an ape in his brain after repeated groin strikes (first question after panel: "what was that one anime with the guy fighting the ape?"), multiple horndog Amuro Ray-centric episodes of Gundam-san, Lupin the Third escaping justice once again thanks to the power of police racism, Ronald McDonald the creepy stalker, Segata Sanshiro's repeated assaults on children who dared to not be playing Sega Saturn, Metal Gear Payback, that Kirstin Dunst "Turning Japanese" music video by McG that I wouldn't dare show at any other convention besides AWA because it has a few shots of cartoon boob I forgot were there, Cooking With Scorpion, the opening scene to "Stone Cold" starring Brian Bosworth, the best bodybuilder fight in Indian cinema, Danger 5 goes super sentai once again, the Buddha's Palm vs the acidic zit dwarf, Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser, Vegeta fights Cup Noodle, Frozen meets The Thing, Inferno Cop versus the FBI, Air Man Will Not Die (by popular demand), Metal Gear Sunrising, using Kirin Litchi to get sempai to notice you, le film de Mutafukaz by Studio 4C, and of course GARBAGE DAY.
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